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The National Park Slovak Krast, with an area of over 36 000 ten-hectares, is one of the biggest karst areas in Central Europe.
The Zádielská Valley belongs to the gems of Slovak rock-climbing? The climbing of the specified rock massives is permitted from 1st August until the 1st of March.
The statue of the marathon runner is the only one in the world. There isn't an artistic sculpture depicting a marathon runner anywhere else in the world, additionally, a part of this piece of art is documentation of all the marathon winners, who've conquered the running track in Košice.
There's an exceptionally rare epitaph written by the field marshal F. Renaud from 1740 in the Fransiscan Seminary Church, made by G. R. Donner, the exclusive sculptor of Vienna.
The Premonstratesian monastery contains unique symbology? It has 4 entrances, just like the number of seasons, 12 chimneys just like the number of months in a year and 365 windows just like the number of days in a year.
The point situated the lowest in Slovakia is in Dolný Zemplín- the village and municipality Klin nad Bodrogom (94, 3 m above seal level), as well as the lowest situated town in Slovakia - Čierna nad Tisou (110 m above sea level).
Sobrance is the most eastern town in Slovakia.
More than 210 types of birds live in the protected landscape area Latorica.
The reservation Tajba is a unique place where one can find the rare European Pond Tutle.
Morské oko ('The Eye of the Sea') is the biggest enclosed volcanic lake in Slovakia.
Vineyard and winemaking district Tokaj is one of the five in the world, where one can grow grapes for the production of naturally sweet wines.
The museum of guitars in Sobranovce is one of a kind in Europe and the second of its kind in the world.
Zemplínska Šírava has the biggest water area in the region and the second biggest in Slovakia.
Ochtinská Aragonite Cave is the only one of its kind in Europe and there are only two other ones like it in the world.
The Silická Ice Cave is a popular hide-out for bats during the winter, on rare occasion, even the rare Natterer's bat (Myotis nattereri).
A prominent writer of romances, Mór Jókai, who was looking for some jewel pieces for his new novel 'Levočská biela pani' visited the castle Krásna Hôrka in the year 1883? His creation was published in many editions and has been translated into many languages.
The precious frescos were only discovered in the church in Štítnik at the beginning of the 20th century.
The building of the church tower in the Barroque Evangelical Church in Betliar lasted just 2.5 months.
The building work on the church of the Reformed Chruch in Hrhov began on the basis of a collection of gold coins from the locals which came to 789 gold coins in total.
The characteristic 'Šošovkovité' (Slovak for 'in the shape of a lens') Square in Spišská Nová Ves is the longest of its kind in Europe.
The tourist season never ends in Slovak Paradise and tourists can carry on exploring it during the winter months.
That the municipality of Smižany, situated in Slovak Paradise, is the biggest municipality in Slovakia.
Kláštorisko had become a hiding place under the incursion of Tartars on the Spiš territory and has frequently acted as a refuge for local inhabitants.
The characteristic style of the Spiš Jerusalem is also emphasized by the planting of the black pine which resembles cedar from the Middle East.
In the year 2000 the likeness of the bridge went as far as being immortalised on a postal stamp.
The town placed lowest in Slovakia: Čierna nad Tisou (110 m above sea level).
The lowest point in Slovakia: Klin nad Bodrogom (94,3 m above sea level).
The first coat-of- arms for a city in Europe: Košice.
The biggest church in Slovakia: St. Elisabeth Cathedral in Košice.
The biggest castle complex in Central Europe: Spiš Castle (4,1 ten-hectares).
The biggest ice cave in Slovakia: Dobšinská Ice Cave (11 200 m3).
The only cold geyser on the European continent: Herľany.
The oldest marathon in Europe and the second oldest in the world: The International Marathon of Peace (Košice, 1924).
The largest karstic area in Central Europe: The Slovak Karst (440km²).
One of the three accessible aragonite caves in the world: Ochtinská Aragonite Cave.
The biggest botanical garden in Slovakia in terms of the size of its area: Košice (30 ten-hectares, more than 4000 plant species are being grown here).
The tallest church tower in Slovakia: the church Nanebovzatia Panny Márie in Spišská Nová Ves (87m).
The second biggest water area in Slovakia: Zemplínska Šírava (area 33 km², the maximum length 11km, maxiumum breadth 3.5km, the average depth 9.5m and the maximum depth being 14m).
Endemic (a plant which doesn't grow anywhere else in the world): Onosma tornensis (Turniansky Castle).
Košice's golden treasure, containing 920 gold coins from the 15th-17th century, belongs to the oldest bulk discoveries in the world.
The largest zoo in Central Europe and in Slovakia in terms of the size of its area : ZOO Košice.
"Slovenský systém kvality služieb v cestovnom ruchu je inovatívny manažérsky nástroj, ktorý pomáha subjektom pôsobiacim v cestovnom ruchu kontinuálne zvyšovať kvalitu poskytovaných služieb. Jeho ideovým východiskom je osvedčený nemecký systém ServiceQualität Deutschland, ktorého licenciu zakúpilo a pre slovenské podmienky prispôsobilo Ministerstvo dopravy, výstavby a regionálneho rozvoja SR."


text:
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 14, 2006--Loews Corporation (NYSE:LTR; NYSE:CG) announced today the declaration of a quarterly dividend on its Carolina Group stock, in the amount of $0.455 per share, payable December 11, 2006 to shareholders of record as of December 1, 2006.
The Company also stated that concurrently with the declaration of the dividend on Carolina Group stock, approximately $124,262,000 has been applied from funds available in the Carolina Group to reduce the principal amount of the notional intergroup debt of Carolina Group to Loews Group, thereby bringing the principal amount of such debt to approximately $1,229,650,000.
The Carolina Group stock, commonly called a tracking stock, is intended to reflect the economic performance of a defined group of assets and liabilities of the Company, referred to as the Carolina Group. The principal asset attributed to the Carolina Group is the Company's stock in its wholly-owned subsidiary Lorillard, Inc. The Carolina Group is a notional group intended to reflect the performance of a defined set of assets and liabilities. The Carolina Group is not a separate legal entity.
CONTACT: Loews Corporation
Peter W. Keegan
Senior Vice President
Candace Leeds
V.P. of Public Affairs
Darren Daugherty
Investor Relations
SOURCE: Loews Corporation

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Today, Nvidia unveiled its next generation SoC at the CES 2013 in Las Vegas. The company released its successor to the quad-core Cortex-A9 based Tegra 3, the Tegra 4 codenamed Wayne. The Tegra 4 is Nvidia's aim at offering an SoC that competes with the Exynos and other high-end SoCs directly.
The Tegra 4 packs in a quad-core Cortex-A15 which is accompanied by the company's patented 5th core to save battery. The SoC is also based on the 28nm fabrication process that should greatly help in improving battery life compared to Tegra 3. On the GPU side, the Tegra 4 packs in a 72-core GPU which should provide at least 10x boost in gaming performance compared to its predecessor.
Nvidia has also worked on improving the imaging capabilities of its SoC, which the company calls "Nvidia Computational photography engine". The new ISP allows Tegra 4 based devices to take HDR photos in realtime along with live HDR video recording.
The Tegra 4 will also be accompanied by a new i500 Icera modem from Nvidia. The only downside here is that there is no integrated LTE modem on the Tegra 4. This will lead to a higher manufacturing cost for the OEMs, and also higher power consumption. The company aims to release a Tegra 4 variant with integrated LTE modem sometime in the second half of this year.
Nvidia's CEO also showed some live demo prototypes of Tegra 4 powered tablets, but did not comment as to when Tegra 4 equipped devices will hit the shelves.


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WESTFIELD — Patricia Brentano is accompanying her environmental art with action.
So besides creating artworks about environmental responsibility — aluminum cutouts of the state's 34 threatened and endangered birds, for example, or large paper replicas of 21 trees felled by a neighbor's chain saw — she started being more environmentally considerate at home by ceding portions of her suburban lawn to nature.
Natural grasses and other native plants went in. English ivy and other invasive species were ripped out. Birdhouses and bat boxes went up. Fertilizers were banned from the Westfield property.
The transformation is ongoing. Brentano's husband of 33 years, Assembly Republican leader Jon Bramnick, is fully on board.
"I'm interested in teaching the everyday person to pay attention and to do just something that might make a better world, whether it be just get rid of your grass so that birds have a place to eat and to live, not to throw plastic into the ocean, whatever it is," Brentano said. "I'm not political, I'm environmental."
The National Audubon Society and Natural Resources Conservation Service recommend six activities to create a healthier yard: reduce pesticide use, conserve water, protect water quality, remove invasive exotic plants, plant native species and support wildlife on your property.
To get her own suburban yard more in tune with nature, Brentano enlisted help from New Jersey Audubon's Stewardship Project. She teamed up with its director, John Parke, who assessed the property's topography, soil conditions and migratory bird traffic, then offered a plan for removing non-native plants and shrubs and replanting varieties that attract hummingbirds, butterflies and beneficial insects.
A portion of the back lawn was allowed to revert to meadow, meaning it was not mowed all season, and a compost pile was started in an out-of-view corner at the back of the yard. A simple, round sand pit was installed to provide a soft, moist landing spot for butterflies. Out front, a portion of the lawn was replaced with a shapely garden of native grasses.
"The goal there was to enhance habitat on the property for the benefit of native wildlife," said Parke, a frequent consultant to corporations, large landowners and farmers seeking advice on making their properties more environmentally friendly. But, he said, the backyard habitat movement is beginning to take hold.
Brentano is creating a pilot program in her Union County suburb. She and Bramnick hosted a fundraiser for Audubon's Stewardship Project at their home last month that brought in $14,000 and raised awareness among their neighbors that they, too, could "rescape the suburbs," as Brentano calls the pilot.
Township administrator Jim Gildea, who attended the event, said he hopes to remove invasive species from municipal parks and get local nurseries to stock native plants as part of the model.
Bramnick said he is drafting legislation that would exempt residents from local weed ordinances if their backyard meadow is certified by a wildlife group like Audubon.
"What Patricia has done is pretty obvious, but no one has talked about it," Bramnick said. "It's an awareness project."
Natural properties require less water and upkeep, he said, and are cheaper to maintain.
Brentano, who anticipates further changes and more plantings in seasons to come, already has noticed more varieties of birds than ever before and more essential pollinators. A screech owl nesting box awaits its first inhabitants.
Brentano said the upgrades are even more noticeable when compared with the lot next door, which was clear-cut to make way for a large, two-story house that's being built.
Homeowners can get more information at the Audubon's website, www.njaudubon.org, or by emailing Parke at email@example.com.


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It wasn't the greatest of years for cinema, to be honest, and it's hard to figure why, unless the planets pulled sufficiently at once to put filmmakers from Buenos Aires to Tokyo to Rome sufficiently off their game. There were certainly no more bad films than usual out there this year (though certainly more than usual involving George Clooney) but few stood out. There were plenty of competent modest works made by up-and-coming directors and more established ones (even Woody Allen weighed in with a surprisingly decent film). But the films that will last can probably be counted on one hand. That said, all the films in the top ten here are worth a look and more than a few from the list of the rest at the bottom of the page. As ever in this end-of-year list my criterion for inclusion is a French release this year, hence the omission of certain films, such as Mike Leigh's Another Year (not yet released here) and Lucretia Martel's The Headless Woman (here last year), that might otherwise have made it. There are also films missing that I missed - Yorgos Lanthimos' Dogtooth is one I would love to have seen but it just didn't happen for one reason or another. There are films that aren't there because I thought they were awful cack (yes, I'm thinking of you, Inception) and finally, there are films that may not have been released elsewhere this year, putting me either ahead or behind the time on that count.
Enjoy reading and watching and feel free to argue strongly about anything that you think should or shouldn't be there.
1. Police, Adjective (Corneliu Porumboiu - Romania)
Corneliu Porumboiu surfed the wave of the New Romanian cinema in 2006, when he won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes for his first film 12:08 East of Bucharest. Based on his own experiences working as a cameraman in local TV, the film was a witty political comedy, which queried, in mock-heroic fashion, whether there actually was a revolutionary movement in a small Romanian town before Ceausescu abdicated at 12:08 on the 21st of December 1989. It played with themes of bravado and bragaddoccio familiar to every liberation movement, and its good-natured puncturing of faux-heroism was best exemplified by the film taking place during the none-too-momentous 16th anniversary of the revolution.
Porumboiu returned to Cannes last year with his second film Police, Adjective, a similarly astute examination of the legacy of the Securitate police state in contemporary Romania. Dragos Bucur plays Cristi, a young conscientious small-town cop, who is entrusted with tailing a trio of schoolkids who smoke hash during their lunchbreak. His boss and the public prosecutor both want a bust and the kids sent down but Cristi is reluctant to wilfully destroy the lives of the youngsters with a certain prison sentence when he is naively convinced that the drug laws will soon be overhauled. Cristi also suspects the older brother of one of the kids of trafficking, thereby giving him an extra incentive to bide his time.
It all sounds like a low-rent version of The Wire, and there are superficial similarities with the HBO show (it is not too surprising either that HBO's Romanian arm was involved in financing this film). But the scale is much smaller, with the focus firmly on Cristi, a droopy but sympathetic figure, a Bartleby-in-the-making, who questions everything – the law, his superiors, the grammatical exigencies of the Romanian Academy that his schoolteacher wife tells him about. It would be a stretch to say Cristi is idealistic but he is responding naturally to what he perceives to be the absurdity and the injustice of the system he is forced to work in.
Cristi's boss, police chief Anghelache is a formidable, malevolent figure played with great brio by Vlad Ivanov, the abortionist from 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days. He is the ultimate arbiter, who holds the fate of all, his terrified employees and the townspeople alike, in his grasp. The showdown scene between him and Cristi is a masterpiece of dark sardonic comedy. Police, Adjective is an improbably gripping drama, filmed at a languid pace and with a lightness of touch that has been compared to Jim Jarmusch. But unlike the watery brew of Jarmusch's work, in Porumboiu's films, the characters have no refuge from contemporary society, nor from history itself.
2. Des hommes et des dieux (Xavier Beauvois – France)
Beauvois, the great autodidact of French cinema, turns his focus once again to an enclosed group of men, following his engaging police drama from 2006 Le petit lieutenant. This time, the subject matter is the sombre tale of the Tibherine monks, a community of French Trappist brethren based in a village in the Atlas Mountains in Algeria, who were massacred, allegedly by Islamists, in 1996, at the height of the Algerian Civil War. Beauvois, a decidedly non-spiritual filmmaker, is at ease documenting the artisanal day-to-day life of the monastery, with many sequences recalling Philip Gröning's masterly documentary Into Great Silence, about the Carthusian monks of La Grande Chartreuse.
The monks enjoy a good relationship with the Muslim villagers, not least because of the free medical clinic they run, but they are threatened by the advent of Islamic fundamentalism. A pair of Croatian contractors get their throats cut at a nearby building site and then an armed group of FIS jihadists turns up at the monastery on Christmas Eve, demanding medicine for one of their wounded. They go away empty-handed but the monks are left with a quandary, whether they should leave for their own safety, abandoning the villagers or to stand their ground, putting themselves at risk and also inviting accusations of colonial arrogance. The latter is the view of the local police chief, who wants them gone. He sees them as a legacy of French imperialism and he also would have them out of the way for him to prosecute his intended dirty war against the FIS. The villagers, however, saddled with unbearable poverty and terrified at the onslaught of radicalism, want them to stay.
Given the fate of the monks is well known to the viewer – or certainly in France, at least – the film plays out as a sombre foretelling of their doom to come. The monks vote to stay, though there are some who clearly do not want to. The cast does a superb job laying bare the terrified vulnerability of unremarkable men, and one has to hand it to Beauvois for having the nous to choose one of the frothiest of French actors, Lambert Wilson, to play the abbot Christian. Christian is a frail, bookish presence, but a man who shows stirring fortitude when forced to take a stand against the menace he and his community faces. The film builds to its inevitable climax with an intensely moving last-supper scene set to the strains of Swan Lake, before the monks who fail to escape are taken away as hostages by the Islamists. Controversy still hangs over the death of the monks, whose heads were discovered at an FIS encampment several months after their kidnapping. In recent years, fresh allegations claim the Algerian security forces accidentally killed them in a botched raid and then dressed the killings up to make them look like they were executions. The order has since decamped across the border to Morocco. Des hommes et des dieux is a simple, beautifully-mounted film about one of the countless tragic episodes of Algeria's bloody civil war.
3. Ajami (Scandar Copti & Yaron Shani – Israel)
The fact that the Oscar-nominated Ajami was co-directed by the Palestino-Israeli Copti and the Jewish Shani might give the impression that the film is one of those humanistic reconciliatory dramas so beloved of fok who prefer to see the Palestine-Israel situation as an unfortunate falling-out between neighbours who really should know better. Ajami is however made of darker matter and does not easily bend to 'why-can't-we-all-get-along' flummery. The film is set in the eponymous impoverished neighbourhood in Jaffa, home largely to Palestino-Israelis, and beset by both organised and petty crime. The film follows a number of interconnecting stories, a local family that is the target of extortionists; a teenager from the West Bank, who has entered Israel illegally in an attempt to earn money to pay for his mother's operation; an Israeli cop whose brother has gone missing and a small-time drug dealer whose Jewish girlfriend doesn't go down well in the neighbourhood.
Ajami is a straightforward enough crime film, filmed with all the energy and streetwise verve of a young Scorsese. It also casts a light on a community that is largely ignored by even the more liberal wing of Israeli filmmaking, and also on that community's own ambivalent relationship with its brethren from the occupied territorities. The film is neither a plea for tolerance nor a polemical insistence that inter-communal relations are beyond repair. It is, rather, a hard-nosed portrayal of a marginalised community, a film that is not afraid to show the Israeli police humiliated by the Arab locals, something that hardly went down well with some members of the current Israeli government. In a further twist, a recent attempt by Jewish residents of Jaffa to restrict muezzin's calls in Ajami because of noise complaints is strangely reminiscent of one episode in the film.
4. The Robber (Benjamin Heisenberg – Austria)
Based on the true story of Johann Rettenberger, a marathon runner who moonlighted as a bankrobber, Heisenberg's second film is a fascinating unflinching portrayal of a man tracked. Rettenberger leaves prison at the start of the film, having gained the approval of the authorities with his assiduous training and endurance running. He continues this upon his release and becomes a minor star, coming from nowhere to win the Vienna marathon. Neither, however, does he give up robbing banks. We are never told why, but back-story doesn't really matter. What does is Rettenberger's relentless resistence to captivity. His desire for freedom is instinctive, animalistic and, at times frightening. There is more than a touch of Peter Handke's The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty, about The Robber, and the shadow of Jean-Pierre Melville also looms over proceedings. It's a stark, pessimistic, but deeply admirable film by a young director who looks to have a great future ahead of him.
5. Nostalgia for the Light (Patricio Guzmán – Chile)
The Atacama Desert was the centre of world attention for a few days in October as thirty-three miners were lifted to safety after more than two months underground. Chilean president Sebastian Piñera and his government wasted no opportunity to turn the rescue into a grand media event. It was a canny piece of stage management that ensured a better public image for Chile's right-wing leader than the last one of a similar political hue, Augusto Pinochet.
Patricio Guzmán was a victim of Pinochet's regime, being forced to flee Chile after the 1973 coup d'état that toppled the government of his friend Salvador Allende. Since his return to his native land, he has chronicled the dark days of Chilean democracy's demise in documentaries such as The Battle of Chile and Salvador Allende. In his latest film he heads to the Atacama, indulging the passion for astronomy he has held since he was a child, and filming and interviewing scientists at the world-famous La Silla and Paranal observatories. But the Atacama Desert is also where a number of Pinochet's victims were unceremoniously buried. Guzmán meets some of their relatives, including an oprhaned daughter who now works at the observatory as an astronomer and who reminds us that the living and the disappeared are all essentially stardust.
One thing that strikes you about the relatives (something I've also noticed with the relatives of the Disappeared in Argentina) is their dignity. They are holders of a righteous anger but you never get the sense they are consumed by bitterness or a thirst for revenge. Though they have never attained anything like the justice they deserve, they have always comported themselves infinitely better than those who aligned themselves with Pinochet's regime. The latter are people such as President Piñera's brother José, the General's labour minister, whose website continues to use a 1973 editorial by the Economist as a threadbare rationale for the defence of fascism and state-sanctioned murder in Chile. Nostalgia for the Light is a gentle but angry work, a vital corrective to a media mogul's government that would try to use the rescue of the workers it has always held in contempt to absolve itself of its historical sins against the people of Chile.
6.A Serious Man (Joel and Ethan Coen – USA)
Bar a few nods here and there, the Coens have rarely touched on Judaism in their films. They seem archetypal examples of what Greil Marcus once diagnosed in Bob Dylan – the Jewish American desperate at all costs to integrate himself into the goy mainstream. This is what makes A Serious Man such an exotic, and pleasant surprise. From its non-sequitur opening scene in the Polish-Ukrainian shtetl to a suburban setting in the late 60s that is so square it might as well be the 50s, it feels like nothing the Coens, or anyone else, have done. You imagine they had this in mind when choosing their cast entirely from unknowns or seasoned character actors. That said, there are familiar Coen themes and tropes in there, not least the title character, Larry Gopnik, played with magnanimous angst by Michael Stuhlbarg, who battles against forces trying to deprive him of tenure at his university, WASP neighbours that might just be vicious anti-semites and his wife, who, well, just takes him for a ride. A wonderfully entertaining, occasionally disturbing film that even has the outlandish audacity to suggest that a Korean student could possibly have flunked a maths exam. Yeah, pull the other one…
7. My Joy (Sergei Loznitsa – Russia)
Celebrated documentary filmmaker Loznitsa moves into fiction for the first time, for an enigmatic yet entrancing film about a trucker's violent progress across Russia to deliver a shipment of flour. If it were cheerier you might call it picaresque. Georgy's adventures are interlarded with episodes from the Soviet era, which may or may not have a bearing on goings-on in the current day, and Loznitsa mercilessly uproots the orientation of his narrative on more than one occasion. Closer to the brooding existential cinema of Andrei Zvyagintsev or Pavel Lungin than Alexander Sokurov's spiritual interrogations, My Joy can be hard to watch for those of frail disposition. Loznitsa has however managed to fashion something of wonder out of bleak material.
8. Alamar (Pedro González-Rubio – Mexico)
A five-year-old Italian boy travels to Mexico to visit his father, whom he has never met before. The father, Jorge, subsists happily with his own father, on the Banco Chinchorro, the world's second-largest coral reef. Jorge shows young Natan how to fish and cook and introduces him to the manifold wildlife of the Mexican coast. The sequences are all filmed with a natural matter-of-factness and the film given a documentary verisimilitude by the knowledge that Jorge and Natan are father and son in real life too. It's no surprise that González-Rubio comes from a documentary background and the scenes he depicts with such a benevolent languour provide a thrilling frisson of discovery for even the most seasoned of parents, fishermen or naturalists. A film to watch with your kids, who would be sure to love it too.
9. The Social Network (David Fincher – USA)
This was the biggest surprise of the year for me. I have never been a fan of the slick vacuity of Fincher's films (though I admit Fight Club and Zodiac had their moments) and Aaron Sorkin's peddling of wet dreams for well-meaning beltway liberals had, for me, all the urgency of an Internet Explorer upgrade. And then it was about Facebook, the biggest pricks in the room at this point; you figure that Google chose their motto to be 'don't be evil' because they saw Zuckerberg and Co. coming sharp around that bend. So I wasn't completely sure how this could turn out to be a good thing at all.
But The Social Network works, strangely, as a piece of historical film (and we all know how quickly things begin to look old in the world of technology and the internet). Fincher's restrains his crasser instincts and even his inability to resist filtering his images to a Rembrandt dunnish tone that seems designed to mask the dirt in the corner of the frame. Sorkin's dialogue zings – a little too much, but it does the job – and Jessie Eisenberg is a better example of the Mark Zuckerberg we all know than Mark Zuckerberg probably is. Eisenberg's avatar is a nerd from hell, supercilious, socially retarded, desperate to be loved by all those he despises, but brilliant and as ruthless in his excision of troublesome relationships as he is cavalier in his attitude towards anything beyond the limited purview of the matter in hand.
It certainly helps the Zucker-Eisen-berg case that almost everyone else is either 1.0-dim, 1.0-out of touch or even more of a dislikeable 2.0-muppet than he is. The only truly admirable characters in the film are female – and there aren't many females in The Social Network that one can plausibly call 'characters'. The film may also rely a bit too heavily on the jilted Eduardo Saverin's side of the story and Lawrence Lessig has detected Hollywood vindictiveness in the negative portrayal of the ebulliently enterprising Sean Parker. But The Social Network is a decent, instructive film, a reminder that dim elites are always bound to be usurped by smarter elites and that nice guys don't even get the honour of finishing last.
10. Tehran (Nader T. Homayoun – Iran)
Iranian cinema, the star of the 90s, has retreated from the international spotlight in the Ahmadinejad years as its luminaries have either faced exile (Mohsen Makhmalbaf) or taken refuge in increasingly tiresome formal obsession (Abbas Kiarostami). Only Jafar Panahi and Bahman Ghobadi have kept the flame alive internationally for Iran with their socially engaged cinema. But now Panahi has been locked up by the Islamic regime and banned from making films for twenty years, while Ghobadi was forced into exile after his fiancée Roxana Siberi was expelled after being imprisoned on charges of spying. On his way out Ghobadi cemented his fall from favour with Nobody Knows About Persian Cats, a drama about clandestine rock bands in Iran. It was a pleasing if uneven film, as might be expected from one that had to be shot in secret and on the hoof to circumvent the ban on rock music in the Islamic Republic. But it also signalled the end of a golden era of Iranian cinema, a cinema that appears to be no longer capable of flourishing under the stifling conservatism of the diminutive Twelver Ahmadinejad's government.
Thus it was a relief to discover Homayoun's Tehran, which had all the spark of the films that first came to international prominence in the early 90s, and which also explored new territory that had previously been intimated by the likes of Panahi and Abelfozl Jalili. It tells the tale of Ibrahim, a migrant from the provinces who rents a new-born baby from a people-trafficker to give him an edge begging in the streets of the capital. Things take a turn for the worse and it inevitably becomes complicated for Ibrahim. For those that know Iranian cinema and its codes and conventions designed to skirt government restrictions, Tehran is a startlingly candid piece of realism. It delves into the grim, murky underworld of migrant workers, who live three or four to a room, and who survive by recourse to practices that are not only forbidden but their existence denied by the Iranian authorities. It remains a mystery how Homayoun got the film made but as it is we should be thankful for one of the few fictional documents of a crucial period of Iranian history to have made it all the way to the West.
And others that weren't too bad at all:
La terre de la folie (Luc Mollet – France)
Shirin/Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami – Iran/France/Italy)
Disgrace (Steve Jacobs – Australia/South Africa)
Mother (Bong Joon-ho – South Korea)
Nobody Knows About Persian Cats (Bahman Ghobadi – Iran)
Precious (Lee Daniels – USA)
Weaving Girl (Wang Quanan – China)
Bad Lieutenant – Port of Call: New Orleans (Werner Herzog – USA/Germany)
Ander (Roberto Castón – Euskadi/Spain)
The Ghost (Roman Polanski – USA/France)
Optical Illusions (Cristián Jiménez – Chile)
White Material (Claire Denis – France)
Después de la revolución (Vincent Dieutre – France)
Daddy Longlegs (Josh and Benny Safdie – USA)
Life During Wartime (Todd Solondz – USA)
Film : Socialisme (Jean-Luc Godard – France)
Like You Know It All (Hong Sang-soo – South Korea)
Green Zone (Paul Greengrass – USA)
Dirty Diaries (Various – Sweden)
Tales from the Golden Age Parts 1 & 2 (Various – Romania)
L'illusioniste (Sylvain Chomet – France/UK)
The Mouth of the Wolf (Pietro Marcello – Italy)
Benda Bilili! (Renaud Barret, Florent de la Tullaye – France)
Vénus Noire (Abdelketif Kechiche – France)
The Housemaid (Im Sang-soo – South Korea)
Rubber (Quentin Dupieux – France)
The Other Guys (Adam McKay – USA)
To Die Like a Man (João Pedro Rodrigues – Portugal)
Fair Game (Doug Liman - USA)
Fix ME (Rael Andoni - Palestine)
Draquila – L'Italia che trema (Sabina Guzzanti – Italy)
Mysteries of Lisbon (Raúl Ruiz – Portugal)
Uncle Boonmee, Who Can Remember His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul – Thailand)
Submarino (Thomas Vinterberg – Denmark)
Poetry (Lee Chang-dong – South Korea)
You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger (Woody Allen – USA/UK)
Kaboom (Greg Araki – USA)
Homme au bain (Christophe Honoré – France)
Honey (Semih Kaplanoğlu – Turkey)
Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich – USA)
Four Lions (Chris Morris – UK)
The City Below (Christoph Hochhäusler – Germany)


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* You Need To Know this…When Adam and Eve sinned and were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, man was doomed. However, God sent his son Jesus to pay in full the contract on our lives. The debt has been paid in full. There is nothing anyone can do about it; except miss it. For those who believe; you've been bought back from the power of sin and death. The power of sin and death can get you a front row seat in hell. That's a fact.
The Blood of Jesus freely gives the believer redemption. Meditate upon these scriptures for greater revelation.
2Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy;
7In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;
Ephesians 1: 7
Revelation 5:9 (King James Version)
King James Version (KJV)
9And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;
This is so powerful. Please feel free to write to say what you received in sincerity.
* Recommended Reading- Accompanying Scriptures!


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When you are facing any legal issue, having experienced and respected counsel by your side is invaluable. However, if you are the victim of a personal injury or medical malpractice, having a dedicated and knowledgeable attorney can help you get your life and finances back in order after a difficult ordeal.
Since our founding, we have recovered significant sums of money for clients in cases involving personal injury, including car and truck accidents, as well as medical malpractice, dangerous prescription drugs and unsafe medical devices such as IVC filters.
At MGM Attorneys, our attorneys not only have more than 100 years of combined experience serving our state, along the way becoming one of the most respected personal injury law firms in all of Louisiana.


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Here are five games under development or available to consumers on a limited basis, which aim to improve mental health or cognitive skills.
Treasure of Bell Island by Blue Marble Gaming Co.
Many Army veterans use this video game for tablets or computers for rehabilitation after suffering traumatic brain injury or PTSD. Players are part of a treasure-hunting company who seek Bell Island's secret trove, taking on puzzles and challenges along the way that are designed to improve attention and focus.
Sparx by Sally Merry, University of Auckland in New Zealand
This game is geared toward depressed adolescents and uses avatars to take players through seven fictional provinces. These include the Cave Province, where players seek hopeful thoughts, or the Ice Province, where they learn the benefits of being active.
Elude by the Singapore-MIT GameLab
A game about the experience of depression, in which the player's surroundings represent various moods. Climbing trees helps players discover new passions, and reaching for birds or grabbing new ideas helps players work toward happiness.
Groundskeeper by CogCubed
This game, meant for teens with depression, anxiety, or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, is a Whac-a-mole-style game intended to help diagnose and possibly treat attention and anxiety problems. On 1.5-by-1.5-inch screens, players have to pay attention to a creature appearing and knock it out of the way while keeping track of other distractions.
Personal Investigator by David Coyle, University of Bristol in England
P.I. aims to help adolescents set goals for improving mental health and to get them talking to their doctors about what they want out of clinical visits. The game is meant to be played during therapy sessions.
Sanjena Sathian can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com. Follow her on Twitter @sasathian.